0hir Mecand ^Htim, 






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Our Second Martyr. 



A DISCOURSE 

DELIVERED IN 

The Thirty-Fou[|th St. Reformed Church, 

NEW YORK CITV, 

Sabbath Evenings Sept. 2^th, 1881. 

Rev. CARLOS MARTYN, 

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Pastoiof the Church, and CJiaplaiii of Ihc jisl Regiment, 
, fl"^ N. G. S. N. V. 



^cto IJorh : 
P. I'. xMcHreen, Printer, 16 Beek.m.xn St, 

1881. 



J7 ) ^ '^ 



2BG15 





OUR SECOND MARTYR. 



" Know ye not that there is a prince and a great 
man fallen this day in Israeli — 2 Samuel, Hi., 38. 



The long suspense is over. The silver cord is 
loosed, the golden bowl is broken, the pitcher is 
broken at the fountain, the wheel is broken at 
the cistern. The dust returns to the earth as it 
was : and the spirit returns unto God who gave 
it. 

Fifty millions of people catch their breath and 
sigh and mourn, feeling the loss of the great 
chief as a personal bereavement. Fifty millions? 
Two continents walk as mourners in that funeral 
train. The London Times ^ reviewing the demon- 
strations declares: "Such a spectacle has never 
been presented as the mourning with which the 
whole civilized world is honoring the late President 



of the United States. Emperors and kings, senates 
and ministries, are in spirit his pall-bearers ; but 
their peoples, from the highest to the lowest, claim 
to be equally visible and audible as sorrowing 
assistants." These streets clothed in the "trap- 
pings andthe suits of woe," the newspapers stereo- 
typed in black, the voices, like "the sound of 
many wateis," uttered from puljjit and court, from 
hearth and shop, from sidewalk and counting- 
room, from prairie and savannah, telegraph and 
cable electric with condolence, all Europe echoing 
the sorrow of all America, peer and peasant uniting 
in one expression of love and sympathy, our beau- 
tiful flag at half-mast in London, Paris, Berlin, 
Vienna, as in our own cities, nations and peoples 
drawn together as never before : why, it is an un- 
heard-of thing, this universal outcry of interest 
and grief ! 

Death did not produce, it has only intensilled 
this feeling. You remember those weary weeks, 
that nervous strain, the alternations of hope and 
fear, the eager lips that asked every where as the 
first question, what the last word was from him in 
whose massive breast the heart of Christendom 
throbbed. 

Well, well, he deserved it all ! Was ever suf- 
ferer more patient, more cheerful, sweeter, braver? 



What wonder that the world was melted into 
admiration. Such a career, inspiring as the white 
plume of Navarre, and beyond all, sucli a sick- 
bed, might well stir all men and women to a sense 
of personal kinship, and now, alas, of individual 
loss. 

It has been admirably said by Mr. Froude — a 
questionable historian, but the most brilliant pam- 
phleteer since Daniel De Foe — that "in every depart- 
ment of human life there is always one type of man 
which is the best, living and working a radiant way 
to heaven in the very middle of us." This type he 
holds it to be our duty to find,— to see what makes 
individuals of this type the best ; and to raise up 
their excellence into an acknowledged standard, of 
which they themselves shall be the living witnesses. 
Just as Catholicism has its saints,— models in 
whose mold those whom it controls are run and 
shaped, so politics, science, art, literature, should 
have their orders of nobility laid out in the name 
of God, of whom we should say : Look at these 
men; bless God for them ; and follow them. 

He adds: " Place before a boy the figure of a 
noble man ; let the circumstances in whicli he has 
earned his claim to be called noble be such as the 
boy sees around himself ; let him see rhis hero 
rising above surrounding temptations, and follow- 



6 

ing life virtuously and victoriously forward, and 
you will kindle his heart as nothing else will 
kindle it." 

James A. Garfield supplies us with such a type. 
In the words which Shakspeare puts into the 
mouth of Antony in " Julius Cffisar" : 

" The elements 
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up 
And say to all the world, This was a Man." 

His intellectual gifts and moral worth were recog- 
nized on every side. His public career was the 
pride of both parties : American in the best sense. 
As citizen, as soldier, as Congressman, as Chief - 
Magistrate, he was tried and not found wanting. 
Although he held his last high office only about 
six months — spending three of the six in the battle 
with death — his methods and the spirit of his 
administration gained him the respect and confi- 
dence of the whole nation. One of the youngest of 
our Presidents, he had a larger personal acquaint- 
ance than an}^ of them, except, perhaps, Gen. 
Grant. 

Hume's decription of the Saxon Alfred may be 
repeated almost without the suspicion of exag- 
gerating his merits: "He knew how to conciliate 
the most enterprising spirit with the coolest 



moderation ; the most obstinate perseverance with 
the easiest tiexibility ; tiie most severe justice with 
the greatest lenity ; the greatest rigor in commantl 
with the greatest affability of deportment ; the 
highest capacity and inclination for science with 
the most shining talents for action. His civil and 
his military virtues are almost equally the ob- 
jects of our admiration, excepting only that the 
former, being more rare among princes, as well 
as more useful, seem chiefly to challenge our ap- 
plause. Nature also, as if desirous that so bright 
a production of her skill should be set in the 
fairest light, had bestow^ed on him all bodily ac- 
complishments—vigor of limbs, dignity of shape 
and air, and a pleasing, engaging and open coun- 
tenance. 

And yet how inadequately we knew him until 
the assassin's bullet disclosed his grandeur. Then 
the plodding work-boy, the struggling student, 
the patient scholar, the gallant soldier, the states- 
man weighted with public cares, ever as he 
wrought at some great purpose, hampered by 
poverty— emerged into the hero of his age. Suf- 
fering, innocently brought on him, crowned him. 
He was long enough, sweet-souled enough, forgiv- 
ing enough, heroic enough in dying to win such 
a place in the aflections of the human race, as 



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it has rarely been permitted any human being 
to gain. And he has left behind him the memory 
of his grand Christian manhood as an enduring 
monument. 

Was ever man more singularly happy and 
fortunate in his home life ? I know of nothing 
finer than those scenes on which we have looked 
through that sick-room door. The wife and 
mother, tearless with grief, full of feeling, yet 
with too much Christian courage to vent her 
feelings in useless lamentations, ministering like 
an angel beside her husband, yet neglecting no 
other claims, ever present, always felt, the soul 
of the house ; calm when all others were con- 
vulsed, hopeful when even the physicians de- 
spaired, lifting herself unconsciously, by heroic 
purpose and Christian grace, to be the typical 
matron of the age, and giving her sex a new 
title to love and veneration ; poor little Mollie, 
her father's pet; the young man over his books 
at college ; the two boys away in the Ohio home ; 
the dear old mother, bowed beneath eighty 
years, waiting for "her boy, James," who should 
never come back to her longing arms : God 
bless them all ! With the good English Queen, 
in her touching message to Mrs. Garfield, we 



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commend them to "■ the husband of the widow 
and tlie father of tlie fatherless." 

It is a mighty consohition to know that our 
second martyr was prepared to die. He had re- 
membered his Creator in the days of his youth. 
Once, when a student at Amherst, he was out 
with a party of his chums on the sides of old 
Greylock— that superb mountain at whose feet 
the college nestles. With the rest, he was full 
of fun and frolic. Suddenly, looking to the 
Avest, he saw tliat the sun was about to set. 
"Boys," cried he, "I have been taught by my 
mother always to read a chapter in the Bible 
at this hour. Excuse me for a little." He 
withdrew, and, throwing himself upon the ground, 
he took out a pocket Testament, and was soon 
lost to the world. Such an act, in such com- 
pany, reveals the hero. 

For twenty years no life was busier and more 
hiirried than his. Yet he always made time 
each day to build a solitude around his heart 
in which to commune with God. Who doubts 
that this habit developed the manhood Ave ad- 
mired Certain it is that his piety, modest and 
unobtrusive, but thorough and genuine, enabled 
him to live clearly and to die gloriously. "I 
have faced death before," said he soon after 



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he was shot, remembering the ghastly scenes of 
the civil war, in which he had been a promi- 
nent actor — "and I am not afraid of him!" 

Friends, if we would not fear death, let us do as 
he did. Let us regard our relations to God as 
paramount. Let us bestir ourselves to make our 
peace with God through His dear Son. We are as 
likely as he to be cut down suddenly. Dis- 
ease, accident, violence, any one of ten thousand 
mishaps may stretch us on a death bed. How un- 
happy, if we have made no preparation for the 
dread hereafter ! How terrible to plunge unready 
into death ! The pain and daze of a fatal sickness 
afford a poor opportunity for preparation. I hear 
a voice sounding from his coffin. It says, to you, 
and me, and all of us: "Be wise to-day. 'Tis 
madness to defer!" 

Let no one in this hour of depression lose faith 
in prayer. At the first thought some may be 
tempted to feel that there is little efficacy in it. 
Christ said: "If two of you shall agree on earth 
as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall 
be done for them of my Father which is in 
heaven." Such assurances abound. 

Well, not two of us, but millions, belieyers on 
both continents, wrestled with God for the life 
(if this man. Multitudes prayer! as n^vpr before. 



II 



with tears and agony. Nevertheless he is dead. 
Through all the untold anguish of liis sufTerings, 
terrible as the rack of the Spanish Inquisition, he 
seemed to be saying : 

" I hear a voice you cannot hear, 
Which says I must not stay. 
I see a hand you cannot see, 
Wliich beckons me away." 

Brethren, we are not to conclude that God has 
not heard and answered our prayers for our dead 
chief, because he has not done precisely what we 
craved. He liafi heard. He has answered. 

Reflect a moment. Why did we ask Grod to 
prolong President Garfield's life I Was it not 
because we believed his life would prove a bless- 
ing to his age and nation % because we esteemed 
him able to do a great work for God and for 
men ? Now, if God saw that He could accom- 
plish more in the death of that dear man than 
in his liffc, would not the spirit of our prayers 
be answered ? 

Consider the result. Through our common 
affliction, the North and the South lock hands 
to-day over his bier in a truer brotherhood than 
we have known since Washington of Virginia 
and Greene of New England cantered side by side 
over the battlefields of the Revolution. The 



12 



country exhibits its self-poise and strength, by 
imitating in the midst of profound feeling, the 
patience and faith of the President's family, and 
endures the crisis without either political or 
industrial disturbance. The face of Liberty is 
is veiled, but her heart beats strong and calm 
and true as ever. The voice of party rancor 
loses its venom. In that presence, there are no 
Democrats and no Republicans. The attention of 
fifty millions of people is directed to the causes 
which might be expected to produce such ghastly 
fruit. 

All this is so plain that a European critic em- 
phasized it, remarking: "America has gained the 
credit and profit which great nations win by 
breeding men worthy to live and die in their 
service. She has gained golden opinions from 
civilized mankind, who have watched with ad- 
miration, even with envy, the intense, invaluable 
spirit of nationality which has made the xvhole 
Republic suspend its quarrels and stand with 
one thought, hope, prayer, united in brotherly 
love, first around the sick-bed, and now around 
the coffin, of him who represented each and all. 
The bullet of the assassin has slain the Presi- 
dent. It will also kill, let us hope, the political 
abuses that made Guiteau possible.'' 



13 



Add to all this the amazing display of love 
and sympathy I'rom abroad. As electricity and 
steam have annihilated time and space, making 
Europe and America next door neiglibors, so 
this common sorrow has overrun national boun- 
daries, and unified the human race. The Eng- 
lish Court goes into mourning ; an unpreceden- 
ted honor when paid to one neither a relative 
of the royal family nor a sovereign. The Queen 
telegraphs her condolences again and again and 
yet again to Mrs. Garfield, showing, as the 
American Minister, Mr. Lovvell, said at the great 
meeting at Exeter Hall, in London, on the 
24th of September, " how true a woman's heart 
beats under the royal purple," and stirring all 
Americans to shout, " God bless Victoria ! " 
and to sing, "God Save the Queen I " Parish 
bells toll throughout the Kingdom. The grief 
in Great Britain is unparalleled since the deatli 
of the Prince Consort. The two great English 
speaking nations are drawn together in closest 
fraternity. 

Witness France, Germany, Itah-, Spain, 
taking bereaved America in their arms as we 
lift our martyr into ours. Ah ! costly as is the 
sacrifice, the compensation is swe^t. Can you 
not hear those mute lips say: "And will my 



14 

death purchase all this? Gladly would I die 
daily to buy for my America one item in such 
a catalogue of blessings ! " 

I remember the private agony. I bear in 
mind the untimely cutting off of life in its 
prime, in the midst of grieving friends, sur- 
rounded by honors hardly tasted, on the thres- 
hold of what bade fair to be the halcyon ad- 
ministration of modern times. Nevertheless, I 
am certain that grand public uses are filled to 
the brim by his death as they could not have 
been by his life. 

And who knows what he may have escaped ? 
Now, his fame at the zenith, he moves from 
life into history. He lays down the burdens 
of his great position. He escapes its perils and 
its pursuing cares. And dying, like Samson in 
the temple of Dagon, he avenges himself and 
his country by pulling down the two pillars of 
American and European indignation upon the 
Philistines of abuse and corruption. Does not 
God hear and answer prayer? Has he not heard 
and answered it in this case ? Surely, we may 
sing of our martyr as Milton did over the dead 
body ol" his friend Lycidas : 



15 



" Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt 
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and lair 
And what may quiet us in a death so noble." 

If the dead President had a voice to-day, he 
would urge us all to be true Americans. With 
him patriotism was at once a principle and 
a ]iassion. Himself the best fruit of our insti- 
tutions, he prized them at their full value. He 
lived, he died for America. One of his latest 
utterances was this: " The people, the people 
my trust." 

We cannot look to fill the great place in the 
public eye he occupied. But we can emulate 
the patriotism which was his inspiration. This 
grand, free country of ours— we can love and 
serve it. We can do our whole duty towards 
it. We can be jealous of its honor. We can 
contribute something out of the storehouse of 
our thought and time to the promotion of its 
best interests. 

There is need that we bestir ourselves. For 
we can see in the flash of that ]>istol, and be- 
hind the wretch who pulled the trigger, whole 
regiments of conspirators, troops of unscrupulous 
aims, pqnndrons of mercenary and mendacious 
ambitions, nnd nrmies of villninous ngencies— 



16 



all fully bent on possessing and perverting the 
government of a free people to the upbuilding of 
their own individual and corporate greeds. And 
we can see good men drawing themselves away, 
or sitting apart, in hopeless ignorance of what 
to do, or in disgust at their helplessness, dis- 
mayed by the prevalence of sellishness and cor- 
ruption. 

There is a class among us who stand aloof 
from politics — wealthy men, literary men, com- 
mercial men ; the very class that has most 
at stake. Like the effeminate nobles of ancient 
Rome, they sit high up in the political coliseum 
and criticise the uiigraceful struggles of the 
gladiators, and shrug their shoulders at the 
harsh cries in the arena. "In the theatre of 
man's life," says Lord Bacon, " Grod and His 
angels should be the only lookers-on." 

Our place is in the conflict. It has been said 
that "sin is not taken out of man as Eve was 
out of Adam, by putting him to sleep." 
Neither are political abuses gotten rid of by 
shutting our eyes to them. Rough work must 
be done, and it is as much your business and 
mine to do it as it is anybody's. 

You remember the striking simile of Fisher 
Ames: "A monarchy is a man-of-war — stanch^ 



17 



iron-ribbed, and resistless when under full sail ; 
yet a single hidden rock sends her to the bot 
torn. Our Republic is a raft, hard to steer, and 
your feet always wet, but nothing can sink 
her." Don't be afraid, friends, to stand in the 
water of democracy. Better catch cold than be 
a slave. Woe betide the nation whose sons 
are so given over to money-getting and pleasure- 
seeking, so cankered and seltisli, that Mammon, 
with his muck-rake, and Harlequin, with cap 
and bells, have become the symbols of daily 
thought and life. 

I have nothing to say concerning the choice 
we should make of parties and men. But some 
conscientious choice we are under bonds to 
make. Shame on the citizen who values his 
citizenship so lightly that he can refuse to drop 
a ballot. Shame on the recreant American, 
who, inheriting royal prerogatives, abdicates his 
sovereignty and un-kings himself. Children of 
the men of 1776 ! Fellow-citizens, with the 
martyr President ! as often as election day 
returns, bear it in mind that we need no pistol, 
no dynamite, because, as Whittier sings, we 
have 



18 

" a weapon firmer set, 

And better than the bayonet; 
A weapon that comes down as still 
As snow-flakes fall upon tlie sod, 
Yet executes a freeman's will, 
As lightning does the will of God." 

'' Le Roi est mort : Vhele RoiP' "The King 
is dead — long live the King!" President Garfield 
is gone. President Arthur succeeds him. The 
new President needs, if mortal man ever did, 
the kindly judgment and good will of the peo- 
ple. The circumstances under which he assumes 
the Government are full of pain and' difficulty. 
His carriage through these dreadful weeks has 
been admirable — reticent, dignified, and sympa- 
thetic. Instead of watching for faults — instead 
of searching the record of the past for blemishes — 
instead of prophecying a book of lamentations 
for the future — let us give him our hopes and 
prayers. Chastened by this awful calamity, our 
hearts should flow out warmly to him who stands 
in the gap made by death. 

Those who know President Arthur best, trust 
and honor him most. We are all acquainted with 
his generous nature and great ability. We are 
bound to believe that he will discharge his sacred 
trust in a way that shall knit to him the loyal 



19 



allegiance of tliese mourning hearts. As he en- 
ters the shadowed Wliite House, may the sun- 
shine of public confidence kindle the gloom before 
his feet. xVnd ma}' God enable him to be — as his 
inaugural address indicates that he means to be — 
the President, not of a faction, nor even of a 
party, but of the American people. 

For ourselves, dear friends, let us learn from all 
this not to envy the great. Do not court place 
and power. We are most of us, I fear, i)rone to 
undervalue our present situation, and to imagine 
that ha]jpiness is to be found in some different, 
and especially some more exalted station. 

Ah, happiness must be looked for, not in the 
world without, but h eve with in, in the heart, in "a 
conscience void of offence towards God and 
towards men." Least of all should we expect 
to find happiness in an exalted station. Shall 
not experience teach us wisdom ? Almost without 
exception the great of earth have been the unfor- 
tunate of earth. History is the record of their 
sorrows. The thunder-robed old prophets lived 
and died under the frown of their age. The 
Apostles were all martyred, save one. The Caesars 
were struck from the throne by assassination, 
in red succession. Marie Antoinette was guillo- 
tined. Napoleon died at St. Helena. In our day, 



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the Czars, Kaisers and Bismarcks are targets for 
conspirators. And even gentle and righteous 
rulers like Lincoln and Garfield are martyred. 

Ages ago, a woman of Shunein had put Elisha, 
the prophet, under great obligation by her hospi- 
tality. One day he sent G-ehazi, his servant, to 
acknowledge the kindness, and to ask her, 
"Wouldst thou be spoken for to the King, or to 
the Captain of the Host?" Mark the reply: 
"And she answered, 'I dwell among mine own 
people.' " Her spirit, which could set bounds to 
her desires and enjoy her present condition with- 
out envy or repining, — would to God it miglit 
descend upon us all ! 

De Foe never wrote a wiser page than that in 
the Oldening chapter of "Robinson Crusoe," in 
which he paints the father as counseling his boy, 
mad with ambition, to abide in the state wherein 
he was born — the middle station. "He bade me 
observe," says Crusoe, " that the calamities of life 
were shared among the upper and lower part of 
mankind ; but that the middle station had the 
fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many 
vicissitudes ; that peace and plenty were the hand- 
maids of the condition betwixt the extremes ; that 
temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, 
all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleas- 



21 



nres, were blessings attending the middle station 
in life ; that this way men and women went si- 
lently and smoothly through the world, and com- 
fortably out of it ; not embarrassed with the labors 
of the hands or of the head ; not sold to a life of 
slavery for daily bread, nor harrassed with per- 
plexing circumstances, which rob the soul of peace 
and the body of rest ; not enraged with the pas- 
sion of envy, or the secret burning lust of am- 
bition for great things ; but in easy circumstcinces 
sliding gently through the world, and sensibly 
tasting the sweets of living without the bitter." 

Yes, friends, they that will climb high put 
themselves in the way to fall far. If God calls 
us by supreme abilities, or by the public choice, 
into a high station, so be it. Inclination must 
yield. But, surely, recent events counsel us 
never to push and elbow our way to the upper 
seat. 

Some there are who seem ordained of God to 
minister as high priests before the altar of the 
nation. Without envying such, let us hear them 
and honor them. Not long at best may we 
hope to detain our high and holy ones on earth. 
Ours, especially, appears to be a fatal epoch. 
The great historic actors in the crisis of the 
nation are fast leaving us. Already, the death 



22 



list is long and startling. Chase and Seward, 
Stanton and Greeley, Stevens and Garrison, Hale 
and Wilson, Hooker and Burnside^so the sha- 
dowy procession of the illustrious dead moves 
on, with Lincoln in the van. 

Last, but not least, our martyred Garfield 
closes his radient career, and leaves to a grate- 
ful country and to an applauding world, the 
splendid legacy of his example and character. 

" Take him up tenderly. 
Lift him with care." 

Bear him to the grave amid the proud tears 
of the Reprrblic whose typical child he was. 
And as we bend lovingly over his coffin to look 
our last rrpon his face, let irs murmur : 

' ' Sleep in peace with kindred ashes 
Of the noble and the true ; 
Hands that never failed their country, — 
Hearts that baseness never knew." 



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